First Amendment & Ojai with Kevin Davis

Kevin Davis, co-author of "Community Powered Journalism," has studied deeply the ways in which newspapers and local media can stay relevant, profitable and enable communities to make informed decisions about their future. He's also studied the ways in which many newspapers have lost their way. He explains how, in a perverse twist, the largest and most profitable companies in the world - Google and Facebook - do no original reporting themselves, and yet are getting richer and richer off the few reliable and trustworthy news sources that remain. This has resulted in historic low levels of trust and a breakdown in civility and productive dialogue. The solutions are complex but begin with listening. The process is to drop the pretense of ivory-tower arrogance and actually engage with the public where they are at, determine their needs and provide the information that is meaningful and useful. We talk about the great heroes of journalism's modern era, such as Nobel Prize winners Maria Ressa and Dmitri Muratov, who sounded the clarion call for social media companies to acknowledge the harm they've done to our communities and culture and to hold accountable the demagogues and bad actors who are profiting from that division. We also talked about his project to start the First Amendment Foundation of Ventura County, and how he thinks it can help underserved communities within the county and provide resources for local journalists. We also talked about John Milton, Oliver Cromwell and Walter Winchell. We did not talk about Catherine the Great, coin-operated newsracks or Ariana Grande.